The architecture of a Machine-to-Machine/Man (M2M) communication system may be divided into an M2M application layer, an M2M service capability layer, a communication network layer, an M2M terminal and perception extension layer and a management supporting system.
According to capabilities of M2M terminal devices, the M2M terminal and perception extension layer may divide the M2M terminal devices into the following two types which are respectively introduced below.
One type of M2M terminal device is an M2M terminal with a capability of communicating with an M2M communication network. This type of M2M terminal can directly access an M2M service platform through the communication network, interact with the M2M service platform to implement operation such as registering, certification, authentication and the like over the terminal, provide perception information required by an application and perform service interaction with the application through the M2M service platform, and further receive management over a terminal peripheral.
The other type of M2M terminal device is an M2M gateway with a capability of communicating with the M2M communication network and an M2M stub network. Besides implementing access of the M2M stub network to the M2M communication network, this type of the M2M gateway can further receive information of nodes of the M2M stub network and perform protocol conversion between the M2M stub network and the M2M communication network. A terminal peripheral can only perform short-distance communication due to its own limits, and such a single terminal is called a terminal peripheral. A network formed by multiple such terminal nodes may be called an M2M stub network.
In a practical application process, a characteristic different from that of conventional mobile communication is introduced to an M2M service, for example, a group-based M2M characteristic. When the group-based M2M characteristic is activated, an M2M user, an M2M application or an M2M service platform can control, manage or charge M2M terminal nodes in groups according to service requirements. In such a manner, the group-based M2M characteristic provides a simpler mode for controlling/updating/charging the M2M terminal nodes by taking a group as a granularity, and reduces extra signaling overhead to avoid network congestion. When there are numerous M2M terminal nodes, using the group-based M2M characteristic can further save network resources. Each terminal node within one group may be located in the same position area, and/or have the same characteristic attribute, and/or belong to the same M2M user. For a network, each terminal node in the group is visible.
However, there is no effective mechanism for performing group management over terminal peripherals by an M2M gateway in the related technology.